Martinsburg independent. [volume] (Martinsburg, W. Va.) 1875-1900, 1887-03-12
Bill Nye's Railway Pass.

LINES ON RETURNING THE BLASTED DO
cUNENT TO THE GENIAL eIvER.
HUDSON, WIS, March 30, 1887.
b. r. White, esq. General Passenger
Agent Atchisoa, Topeka and Santa
Fe r r., Topeka, Kan.
DEAR SIR. | enclose herewith an
nual pass No. @ 039 for self and
family over your justly celebrated
road during the year 1887. l also
return your photograph and the let
tiers you have written me during the
past five years. Will you kindly re-
turn mine? And this brief and
beautiful experience is to end and
each of US must go his own way here
after.
Alas,
To you this must be easy, but it
brings a pang to my heart which
your gentle letter of the LIST inst.
cannot wholly alleviate.
Whenever hereafter you look up
on this tearsheakled pass will you
think of me? Remember that you
have cast me from you and that am
wandering across the bleak and wind
swept plains sadly enumerating the
ties on my way to eternity.
l do not say this reprcach you,
for I fear that qou care for another,
and SO we could not be happy again
together. But, oh do you pause to
fully comprehend the pang it costs
me to return this pleasant faced lit
tie pass with its conditions on the
back? Could you see me now, as l
write these lines, turning away and
ever and anon, laying aside my trem-
bling pen to go and sit by the CRATE
and shudder and weep and put
out the fire with my bitter tears
your heart would soften and
you would say Return, o wanderer
return -
You do not say in your letter that
/ have been false to you or that i
have ever grown cold You do not
charge me with infdelity or failure
| to provide. You simply say that it
kNwould be better for each to go his
several ways, forgetting that my sew
eral ways are passing away, passing
away.
1t is we'll enough for to talk about
going your several ways. You have
every facility for doing SO, but with
bme it is different. Several years ago
a large Northwestern cyclone and
myself tried to pass each other on
the same track. When the wrecking
!, crew found me | was in the crotch of
a butternut tree, with broken leg,
I Since that time I have talked with
great difficulty, and to go my several
ways has been very serious matter
with me.
But | do not want you to think
that | am murmuring. except my
doom camly, yet with slight tinge
of unavailing regret.
Some time perhaps, in the middle
of the dark and angry night, when
the cold blasts wall through the tele
\ graph wires and the crashing sleet
rushes with wild and impetuous fury
against the windows of your special
car, as you lie warmly ensconced in
your voluptuous berth and hear the
pitiless winds with hoarse and croupy
means chase each other around the
Kansas haystacks or shrek wildly
away as they light out for their cheer
less home in the Bad Lands, will you
not think of me as grope on blindly
through the keen and pitiless blasts
stumbling over cattle-guards, falling
into culverts and beating out my
rare young brains against your rough
right of way, will you not think of
me 1 do not ask much of you, but
/ do ask this as we separate forever.
AS you whiz by me do not treat
na with oontnrnnlr On. +hro1r nrnnl-nrn